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Wednesday, January 13, 2010

This quilt project has been on my design floor over most of the Christmas period, choosing fabrics at leisure, piecing at irregular intervals whenever I felt the need to sew, even whilst wrapping presents and basting the turkey.

I have been wanting to practise curved machine piecing for some time, and although I think I have improved, I still don't enjoy curved piecing.

I have usedMatilda's Own Drunkard's Path templates to make the blocks. And because I don't like tracing templates, nor cutting fabric with scissors, I have used a small rotary cutter to cut directly around the templates. No tracing, no scissors, so much easier.

28mm Rotary Cutter

An even smaller rotary cutter (18mm) is available, but I found that this size managed the curved templates quite well.

I have used the 3 inch Drunkard's Path templates, with each complete and finished circle block measuring 6 inches. 100 three inch curved blocks and I am glad the center panel of this quilt is finished.

Work on the borders has commenced, and these will add some geometric contrast. No more curved piecing for now. Phew!

55 comments:

I love the circles - I am a big circles fan but have always appliqued, one of my quilting new years resolutions was to piece some circles and the mini rotary cutter and template tip is inspired! Thanks!

beautiful. i love how you have matched together four different materials into each colored circle. I really like using the drunkards pattern. I can`t imagine doing it by machine so beautifully, but you have made me want to give it a try.

I'm getting ready to try some of those curved pieces with the Old Red Barn Quilt-Along's 4th round Circle quilt....kinda scared. But I'm not worried about cutting the circles since I won a compass style circle cutter!:)

Rita, I just love curved piecing and have made a similar quilt to this, just different colors. Your choice of colors always amazes me. Your quilts are happy and cheerful. This is no exception, I love it and I may have to make a similar one!! Love the curves.

Love the rainbow colors and the way you've laid out the drunkard's path block. I have this template for my accuquilt machine and hope to get kits cut up some time soon, soooo maybe by the time you want to do more curved sewing I'll have some made up.

Beautiful circle quilt. One of my favorites! Great color & fabrics.I too am not excited about the templates, but they do work. On the other hand I was very excited to use the Drunkard's Path Die with the AccuQuiltGo. Very fast to cut and truly much easier & faster to sew than templates. The Go leaves a little notch in the fabric which really helps to match up the curve in the two pieces.

Pretty gorgeous Rita.I made a quilt using the extra huge drunkards path template (Only 9 circles and a couple of borders for a queen sized quilt).I found that pretty exhausting with all the curves so I admire your persistance with all those little curves.Looks great (as always).Andi x

Hi,thank you for your comment on my blog, so I could find you here as well. I love your quilts! Can't wait to try it myself, but have to improve our etsy shops first. When everything is routined, I can start a new adventure.

I'm such a circle tragic, I love them. I have the templates and they are good. I also have the 18mm cutter and it's not much good for anything. It is so small, it gets caught on the edge of the templates. Just my experience.

I made this quilthttp://lacubanitacose.blogspot.com/2009/01/my-brothers-quilt.html from a pattern from one of Rowan's quilting books. I made my own templates and used a small rotary cutter. While I loved the final product, piecing curves is not my favorite.Yours is looking great!

Those colors are wonderful! I wish I could just grab that fabric through my laptop screen. :)

I bought one of those rotary compass things but I am a little intimidated by curves. All I've managed to do is applique circles so actually sewing two curved edges together like you did makes me very very nervous.

My quilt group has been obsessed with circle quilts for quite some time...raw-edge-machine-pieced circles...but THIS circle quilt takes the cake! You may have just given us a new "rut" to be in! Thanks!

I love curved piecing. It's like magic how the 2 odd pieces just fall together. I do pretty well at it for some strange reason. I agree...templates are my best friend...templates and tiny rotary cutters. What would we do without them?

R, your blocks came out great! I have a dream to create a quilt using this same block. I even purchased a special presser foot, designed specifically for piecing curved pieces, at a quilt show. I really hope to do it this year. Thanks for the motivation, and for the fabulous pix!